You can catch a plane. In the early states are not easy to get to. From ohio you have to go to chicago and iowa, charlotte into South Carolina or atlanta. The travel, packing and unpacking the bags, that is the hard part. Being away from the family. The one thing that has been interesting is there is almost a consensus in the country not just how screwed up washington , but the challenges of the country. You can be in a Manufacturing Center in youngstown the , hospital has closed, they lost jobs, challenges with opiates, some kind of drug addiction, issues around the environment, algae blooms, water, whatever , and you can go into rural iowa and it is the same thing. They are losing a Maternity Ward in the hospital. They are dealing with a methamphetamine issue. They are losing manufacturing, downtown needs rehabilitated and old theater needs renovated. The commonality to me has been really striking. I thought people were all same thing, but the level of detail as to whats happening to them and the challenges they have is across all of these states. Steve and you have been talking about this on the campaign trail. Lets talk about the lordstown issue. How much was automation versus unions and the industry itself . Rep. Ryan it is kind of like the perfect storm. You have globalization, automation. I said dont get rid of the cafe standards. We are making a smaller more fuelefficient vehicle and i knew once they got rid of fuel efficiency standards, that was going to put the plant in jeopardy. It was a matter of weeks after President Trump got rid of those standards is that they closed the plant down. Combination of everything thats happening. I dont blame donald trump for everything. I blame him for not having a plan to fix it. I think that has been the consensus. Here we have the best jobs in the area. 31 an hour and even the jobs we are talking about replacing are 17 an hour for potential battery facility that goes into lordstown. So, it is the american story of the last 40 years, unfortunately. How do we go from very high paying jobs, globalization, automation, no industrial policy in the united states, no strategy here in the united states, and than the worker takes it on the chin . I think its a combination of all of those. Steve the head of gm making 122 million a year. Do you think there should be salary caps for ceos of these companies . Rep. Ryan you can have salary caps, increased taxes for the top marginal rate. I think there are a variety of ways to get there, but yes the , company made 35 billion in the last three years. They closed facilities and stock prices go up. They got a huge tax cut and the ceo making 281 million on the for every one dollar a person on the factory floor is making. There is a level of unfairness that is gross. It is gross. When you walk the picket line , like i have after the strike happened, and i went from youngstown, to parma, to cleveland in northwest ohio, to detroit, and then to flint, the stories you will hear are people literally driving two hours to get to work and driving two hours home because their family was in cleveland or somewhere a couple hours away and they didnt want to move the kids out of school and the mom or the dad had a decent job. I just want people to know they are making 30 an hour the level of sacrifice many of these workers are making for their families. Is threetoledo, which and a half hours from youngstown. I met more youngstown people in toledo than at the youngstown plant because they got transferred and their families are all back home. I have sympathy for the ones who have young kids. I have a 16yearold 15yearold , and 5yearold, heartbreaking to be away from them. But for them to think i have to do six more years in toledo, ohio and drive back after working five or six, 12 hour shifts to make ends meet is a level of anxiety these families are going through. Those are the best paying jobs in the country. That is just saying, how about all the other people making 15 an hour and have a lot of anxiety, have to drive, or cant afford health care . That pain in the country right now is not even a part of the conversation. Steve what is your campaign all about . Why are you running . Rep. Ryan them. I have been watching this my whole life. I grew up in northeast ohio just out side youngstown. My family all work with factories, all union people. My dad who wasnt union works shifts. Swing shifts. My fatherinlaw worked at a steel mill for 40 years. My grandfather also worked in a steel mill. Hardworked really, really and they keep falling behind. Moments,lly upset and really passionate and moments about it. The unfairness of the leaders in the country that have not put the people in this country on a trajectory to be able to compete. I talk a lot about industrial policy, about having a chief manufacturing officer. Why . Because someone has to help organize the country around sectors of the economy that are growing, like trying to does, any germany does, like country who has a strong middle class does. I believe that i understand that better than anyone else in this race, because i have been living 35 years. Xhole for tim ryan said to his kids and his family i am running for president . Rep. Ryan [laughter] i tried to prepare the kids. This was the running conversation between my wife and i. We have several dinners from the kids. They will call me a lot of things, if we have success you , may see stuff on tv. I wanted to prepare the 15yearold and 16yearold for the psychological piece of it. They are teenagers, so they are living their own lives. I dont think they sit around thinking about me all day but i wanted them to psychologically be prepared for me being away and them having to help their mom out around the house a lot, and what might come from the pressure and stress and the things their friends may do. Rock. E has been like a she has been terrific. She is a first grade teacher. She works really hard. She is a phenomenal teacher. She juggles three kids and two dogs, pretty much by herself. Makingws me support by sure that the kids are getting the attention, help with their homework, good meals for lunch. I try on the weekends to help out a bit on the lunches for the supportt she shows me through action. Steve we saw them at your campaign rally, which we covered live. How did you meet your wife . Rep. Ryan [laughter] through her brotherinlaw at a golf outing, we were playing golf and we played golf. We hit it off immediately. Coincidentally, his last name is ryan too, so we had fun. A couple irish guys on the golf course having some fun. We hit it off and he said, you have to meet my sisterinlaw. , and she was singlele with a couple of kids, and over the course of the next few months, we kind of met, almost like for november 22, 2008, it was almost like the first time, we met at the buck cherry concert in youngstown, ohio and like that was when the fire started. Steve why did you seek a seat in the house . Why the house . Rep. Ryan i thought the problems were national, global. When i had opportunities to run for governor, problems are really structural. It is definitive for our country for the next decade or two or three. I really liked it, but it was more about youngstown. It was more about how can i be in a position to really help my community that i grew up in . How do we get the economy going . Because politicians for years, when i was growing up, they were running for years on talking about steel mills. It was typical trump stuff. We are going to bring the steel back. But we are not bringing the steel mills back, somebody better get a plan together here. Being in a position which is why worked to get on the appropriations committee, there were earmarks and i could bring back the money for particular projects around the district, which i have been able to do. I brought hundreds of millions of dollars back for the local community. But there was always that connection between you need a local plan, but the issues around trade, taxes, globalization were national in nature. Steve if you are not successful in getting the democratic nomination, will you run for reelection . Rep. Ryan yes. Yes. I have got a lot of seniority on the appropriations committee. Im moving up on the defense appropriations committee, and we have been able to do a lot back home. I dont want to forgo what i can do for the people back home. I am still in a position to help, even if this doesnt work out. I am in a good spot there. Steve you challenged speaker pelosi. Rep. Ryan i did. Steve what is your relationship like with her . Rep. Ryan good. Good. I think i conducted myself in a really professional manner. I like her a lot. I have enormous respect for her. I think she is the best politician in the democratic and thatite frankly, bore itself out in the last few days with kind of waiting on the impeachment piece. I have been for impeachment for a month or two, cant remember how long. She waited and waited and kept saying, trump is going to impeach himself. Trump is going to impeach himself. Wouldnt you know it, she was right. So her instincts in the legislative process are second to none. Steve would you, if you stay in the house, like to be speaker someday . Rep. Ryan i dont think so. It was never really my ambition. I was really frustrated when donald trump won, because i felt the Democratic Party is not connecting to the people we started talking about in this conversation. The workers. White, black, brown, men, women, workingclass people. We have to do a better job of connecting. After the trump election in 16, that became even more apparent when we lost michigan, wisconsin, ohio, and pennsylvania. That was the reason for me running and running for president , too. Not only do have big plans and i want to look out for the worker, but in addition to that, i can win those states. Those are my kind of states. Those are rust belt states, and i can do really well in those states and beat donald trump. That is another reason why. But it was the disconnect from them. I think if we reconnect around the new agenda, moving into the new future together, uniting all of these communities we talked about earlier, that have the same problems, it would change the brand of the party. If the nominee is tim ryan from youngstown, ohio, this coastal, liberal, ivy league brand we have been battling against for how long goes away like that. And all of a sudden, we are midwest, bluecollar, future of the economy and new idea party. And i think that would be very, very effective. Steve so if elizabeth warren, hypothetically, is the nominee, you are worried that is how the republicans will brand her . Rep. Ryan i dont think theres any question. Elizabeth warren knows that. You know, almost everybody on stage is coastal, ivy league. There isk we can potential to walk into that. We have everything going on with trump now, so who knows what is going to happen, but i think it is not me saying it. It is what i hear when i go home. Like, mason is 16. He plays football on friday nights. I tried to make it. Im talking to moms and dads at Football Games. Brady is five. He plays flag football. Mornings. Saturday this is what people are saying. The party has forgotten us. They are not talking about us. They are talking about other issues, but not about the wages and jobs. There is a real disconnect in these states. They acted out and voted for trump. And it is still a real issue. And i think whoever the nominee is, one, it has to be, how do we work hard to connect to these workers . Advocating for myself, naturally do. And how do we get right on the issues, so they feel like this stuff isnt being cooked up with them in mind, the policies of the future. Steve and i realize that this is water over the bridge now, but why do you think the Hillary Clinton campaign did not do that . Where was the disconnect . Rep. Ryan i just they didnt go to a lot of these areas. Bill clinton did a bus tour. Barack obama did the bus tour through the small, little towns. There wasnt a lot of that. There was a super focus on driving out the base. You know, and i think there was too much talk about trump and not enough about them, the voter, their economic anxiety. I think trump was very effective, too. I mean, he lied. I mean, he said i am going to raise taxes on the rich, expand health care, we are going to bring manufacturing back, and one of the most effective things he said in our area was bill clinton passing nafta. And we lost thousands of jobs to nafta. Literally companies building another plan another country and shipping the product back to the united states. Unions and factories went from 13,000 to almost nothing, the General Motors facility used to be 16,000 people. Now it is idle. Nafta is perceived to have a lot to do with it, and it did have a tremendous impact. So did globalization and automation. When trump started saying that, i thought, man, that is going to hurt. That is a strike. So he had a little inside lane. Traditionally, a republican couldnt say those things about being against freetrade. He went against republican orthodoxy. I think it helped him a lot. Steve you used the word lane. You have to have a path or a lane to the nomination. What is tim ryans lane . Rep. Ryan i have to be honest with you, i dont like that lane thing. I think a good politician, a good leader can pull from all these areas. Steve but you need a coalition. Rep. Ryan you need a coalition. I think my coalition ultimately will be more moderate people, i think. I have kind of disengaged with the medicare for all us far as taking Peoples Health insurance , forcing them into that system. I came out against decriminalizing at the border. I have come out against Free Health Care for undocumented workers. I think undocumented workers should be able to buy health care, you know, if they are sick. If they cant afford it, we have to deal with that. But you cant say you are going to pay for Free Health Care for undocumented workers, when everyone else is working, driving two hours to and from work to get health care further further own family. For their own family. Thats not going to work. On these issues, i have positioned myself away from most of the field. That would be considered the more centrist or moderate lane. Steve because as you talk to those union workers, they like their private health insurance. Right . Rep. Ryan yes. They are driving two hours to and from work to make sure they dont lose it. To communicate very frankly, they make 30 an hour. That is not a lot of money. It is 60,000 a year, it is good, solid middleclass. But they are doing it, a lot of it, for the health care. They might have a sick kid that needs care. The conversation of taking that away from them when the whole world has collapsed around them, i think is not good. Part of the lane conversation i that i dont like, is not left it is saying it is not left or right, it is new and better. The vibe we have been trapped in, its not working. Its really not even of reflective of the changes that have come in the economy and the our culture and in technology. Globalization blew the left right divide away. Donald trump is living in the left right divide, and a lot of democrats are putting a fresh coat of paint on older policies that are part of the left right divide. What i have been presenting his ideas that have both democrat and republican support, that are about new and better around industrial policy, around manufacturing, electric vehicles, batteries, charging stations, solar, wind. Like 80 of the American People support manufacturing. China is cleaning our clock in all of those areas. So lets unite around something we all agree on. Unionize a lot of these jobs, so they are middleclass jobs. I talk a lot about social and Emotional Learning, Trauma Informed Care for kids in schools, really dealing with their trauma, making sure there is a Mental Health counselor in every school. Social and Emotional Learning has been studied with the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise institute. Left and right. We literally could put a huge High Education reform proposal together and actually have the support of the left and the right. We talk a lot about regenerative agriculture, which is about planting crops yearround, it sequesters carbon into the ground. Farmers made money off of this, because they dont use all the pesticides and all the nitrogen for the fertilizer. They make money and it , like i said, it sequesters carbon, so its huge for the environment, but it has the support of republican and libertarian farmers who dont actually believe that man caused climate change. Well, who cares . They will sequester carbon, which is what the democrats and the liberals and progressives want. Its great for the environment. It produces healthier foods , because it has a lot less pesticides. It gets rid of algae blooms, and the farmers like it. Why wouldnt a modern Democratic Party embrace this and say, this is us, and we are going to go to Rural America and make it happen . None of those are left or right. You see what im saying . They are new and better, and they have a coalition that we could actually move forward on, which i think even partisans are dying for some issue or issues on which we could agree on. Steve with all these issues, im curious, how do you make decisions . What is your thought process . How much time do you read . Kind of go through how tim ryan formulates his opinion. [laughs] i read all the time, my wife makes fun of me, magazines and books lying all around. Watch documentaries and talk to people, too. I mean, i am a pretty social guy, and, you know i talk to example,armers, for around regenerative agriculture. I have a nice network of people. I wrote a book about food and i wrote a book about mindfulness meditation years ago. I have interesting networks of people who send me stuff, because my friends are scientists who study Buddhist Monks brains and written books about that stuff, and people who practice this in schools with with veterans, and then all the ag stuff with farmers and doctors, and the scientists behind that. So i get a lot of incoming, a s most politicians do, a big network. So i get a lot of really cool, kind of cuttingedge, you are going to really like this article kind of thing. I just try to take it in from everywhere. I read a great book by john wooden back in the day, the famous basketball coach. He said 90 of what you learn will be from other people, and i have taken that to heart. Steve in your book, how often do you meditate . How often do you have a zen moment . Rep. Ryan [laughter] you could not have a zen moment because you are meditating. Because your mind is going. I try to do 30 minutes in the morning. I started doing this app on the phone. It is called the breathing app. Its free. I recommend it to everyone. I have been sending it to everybody. I try to do 15 minutes of residence breathing. You kind of coordinate, five in, out,out, or six in, six you coordinate your breathing, and you do that for 15 minutes. I dont know what it does to your nervous system, but you calm down. If anybody has anxiety or depression or any of these issues, i send them the apps to do it. Another 20 or 30 minutes on just after that following my breath, your mind goes off to the path, to the future, the or impeachment, the campaign, or masons Football Game or my wife is dealing with, and then you come back, because those are just thoughts and you come back. The more you discipline your mind to be in the present moment, the more aware you are what is going on in the present moment. Steve so it has helped you . Rep. Ryan i dont think i would still be in congress today. The stress level, the travel, the negativity on social media. Like, i am able to kind of not let that stick. And people are really trying to make it stick, you know, people on twitter and all that stuff. It is really toxic. As a it has been extremely helpful for me. Im not perfect, i make a lot of mistakes, say dumb things still, say thanks to my kids why did i say that . But a lot less. And got to let it go, just let it go. Steve what were you like in high school . Rep. Ryan i was the quarterback. [laughs] rep. Ryan i was quarterback of the football team, captain of the basketball team, got along with everybody. Really competitive. I worked really hard, lifted weights. Just loved sports, loved the cleveland browns, the cavaliers, but then we had michael jordan, and i grew up in a cool sports era. I was very much into sports. Very much my family, my brother was a couple years older than me , and he played. But i got along with everybody. I would be into study hall and would be talking to someone and speech club. It was a great time. I went to a Catholic High School. That really shaped me, the sports aspect and my coaches, but also the teachers there, who were making a lot less than Public School teachers. I tell stories all the time. Like my coaches, you know, i was a good athlete. I remember being late for one of the games, and the bus was waiting for me. I was late. The star of the team, right . Whatever, rules dont apply. I remember the coach, who was the Athletic Director and head of the basketball coach, sat me on the bench for the first half. You will be disciplined. You are part of the team. These people are relying on you and the whole bus is waiting for you. That is the kind of education, a very workingclass catholic school, where a lot of the people worked at General Motors or delphi or one of the factories. They did a little over time to pay for their childs tuition, back when it was cheaper. It was a workingclass neighborhood, so i come very much from that working class, catholic background. Steve let me turn to the process we are in right now. We are still a few months before the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire primary, but already there has been the whittling process based in large part on the debates and the dnc rules. Are they fair . Rep. Ryan no, they are not. But i dont think dnc intentionally, like, thought it would be as unfair as it ended up being. I am not sure that i feel like it has interrupted the natural flow of a campaign. I have run in a lot of campaigns. I remember the first two or three that i ran in for state senate, primary, general, and then congress two years later, primary and general. There is a flow to campaigns, especially a candidate like me i am in theean, bowling alleys, the bingo halls, the bars, breakfast in the morning. It just takes time for a candidate like me. Like, i dont have an ivy league network. I dont have new york city or silicon valley, like, pumping money in. I dont have a bunch of money to roll over. I feel like in my other campaigns, and i was an underdog until the very, very end, because i was on the ground. And have a great article from my congressional race in the primary taking on all kinds of people. A state senator who had been in for years, tom sawyer who was a congressman, sitting congressman, was in this primary election. And there is this great article, a total grassroots effort, and was, one of the candidates had a poll, and they were winning, the other candidate had one and they were winning. They asked my press secretary, who was volunteering on my campaign, who was a teacher at my Catholic High School said, how are you guys doing . And pat said, sounds great on the street. The reporter thought we were completely bsing them, right . We werent. We won significantly. We beat some of the candidates 21 in some of the counties, because we were on the ground. I feel this process is interrupting like i dont think bill clinton could come out of this process, i dont think a jimmy carter could come out of this process. That bothers me a little bit. We will go to the early stage and make enough money to keep going. Steve you made some headlines when you referred to joe biden as declining. Is he too old to be president . Rep. Ryan that is for the people to decide. You know, ultimately, they are the ones who make the judgment , and they are going to have to evaluate all of us. There are a lot of decisions to be made. He brings a lot of wisdom, a lot. He brings a lot of experience, and they have to weigh that was someone like me, who maybe doesnt have as much experience, but i do have 17 years, a little bit younger. It is up to the people to make that decision. Steve if asked to be on the ticket, if there is another democratic nominee, would you serve as Vice President . Rep. Ryan yes. Mean, if someone is the nominee and they think i can help them beat donald trump, i will most certainly be a part of that. I will play that role. I do not necessarily want that role. I want to win. I think we can win. I think there is a path for me to win. To me, it is about making sure that donald trump is not president for four more years. I would be happy to help in any way i can. Final points the 2020 campaign is about what . Rep. Ryan i mean, i always say, and i feel the structural economic problems that have been nagging workingclass people for , poor people for 40 years. Steve let me underscore that. 40 years. This is a longterm problem. Yeah, since the late 1970s. That was the beginning of the end for the steel industry. How many years later, we are talking about lordstown. Not far from where those youngstown steel mills were. And we have an empty auto plan. Pay has gone up 950 . Worker pay has gone up 12 . Health care costs are still going up, and people cannot afford their prescription. And now it has turned into this drug epidemic around opiates, which i think is directly related in so many ways to the Economic Situation people are in. So, yeah, it has been happening a long time. To me, that is the main issue and has been. And i think if you go back to the elections in 2004 was a little twisted because of 9 11. But i think 2006 was an economic election. I think 2008 was an economic election. I think 2010 was an economic election. We do not fix things fast enough. I think 2012 things were getting a little bit better, but romney seemed to rich and wealthy to be on the side of workingclass people. I think 2016 was an economic issue, so modern these are all , economic issues. There is a bully on the playground now. The bully needs to be removed. He is a cancer on the democracy. See what he is doing to our countrys institutions. Our culture. More than anything the president , is a cultural leader. You can either have a leader who is going to take you to the moon, build the arsenal of society, we are going to have a great society. Or we have a leader who says, go back to where you came from. And im going to talk political leaders into helping me back home. That cancer needs to be removed. Donald trump aside, beating him is very important, if we do not fix this economic issue in the country, it is going to keep going. There will be a class of people who have better technology, Better Health care, better neighborhoods, better opportunity, Better Health outcomes, healthier food, healthier environment. That they live in, and you will have a class of people, a large which will end up being a large swath of the American People, who are going to be worse off. Steve which is my final point. As you look at where we are at today, you are a member of the house of representatives, what looking at it objectively, what is going to happen with this impeachment inquiry . Rep. Ryan i would like to think that some republicans in the senate would come around. I think we passed it in the house. I think we will have a lot of most democrats will support it. I think it will go to the senate, and it will be smoke and mirrors, and i think they will circle the wagons, and it will get crushed. They will claim victory. Exonerated, and the campaign for trump will say he is exonerated, and the campaign for president will resume. Which is why we have to play the strategy of who can beat trump in these key states . Who has the vision for the future . Who can talk to these workers and get them bought in for the future . There is a good chance he will still be around. His base will be super animated, super fired up. I worry if we go into the state saying, we will take your health care, we are going to ban hydraulic fracturing, for example, we will take your job because there are thousands of , thousands of people in western pa who are building a natural gas plant. There is another one going in to eastern ohio. So instead of talking about natural gas as a bridge, better we have to do a better job, so we can get to renewable, and do that as quickly as humanly possible in technology advancements. If we come in with those issues on the table, those people will look at donald trump and say, he is a slimeball. I dont like him at all, but he is not point to take my health care. He is not going to take my job. That is a reality. People get mad at me because i say that, but it is the truth. I have lived there my whole life. I know who these people are. That is how they will side. So i think he will still be around, and it will be a hell of a campaign. Steve in this process, what have you learned about tim ryan . Rep. Ryan i am a pretty resilient guy. I am pretty optimistic. I try to learn from the lesson, whatever the lesson is, and let it go. I think that has happened even more and more on the campaign. But i have always kind of been that way. You know . I was cleaning out my basement a few weeks back, and i found a plaque from my high school that my football coach had put quotes on. When you are a senior. The record was 225. Said, most of these comefrombehind wins. He said Something Else nice. Man, i have always been that way. I used to like having the ball and being down with a minute or two minutes to go. I liked it. I was super focused and that was the moment to be in. You build up i am not going to lose. I think a lot of that is the culture i grew up in. There is a great shirt back home that says youngstown invented grit. These workers are driving two hours. I am doing nothing compared to that. That is what i have appreciated about myself in the last few weeks. Steve congressman, we thank you for your time. Rep. Ryan thank you. It was great. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. We willp this morning, discuss the House Democrats impeachment inquiry of President Trump and campaign 2020 with twoparty patriots cofounder jennie garth martin. And jenny beth martin. Wallis willcal jim discuss faith and campaign 2020. Washington journal join the discussion. Here is a look at what is coming up live today on the cspan network. At 10 00 a. M. , a discussion about President Trump and the impeachment inquiry, hosted by the Brookings Institution. At 9 00 a. M. , former National Security advisor john bolton discusses u. S. North korea relations at the center for strategic and international studies. It will be his first remarks since being in that post. Reorganizingm. , diplomacy under secretary mike pompeo. That is from the heritage foundation. Speaker pelosi the house will be in order. For 40 years, cspan has been providing unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country, so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government